Lessons from Madeleine L’Engle
Recently, as part of the Festival of Faith and Writing, I attended a presentation by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter entitled, Rejection, Revision, Repetition: Lessons Learned from an Unpublished Novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It was precisely what I needed to hear. There were so many ways that L’Engle’s story was helpful. Below are my lessons from Madeleine L’Engle.
Who Is Madeleine L’Engle?
Madeleine L’Engle is most known for her young adult book, A Wrinkle in Time. She has also written non-fiction and other fiction books. I loved her book, A Wrinkle in Time, and the following two books in that series, and had read her non-fiction book on her marriage, A Two-Part Invention, but was unaware of how many other books she had written. And I certainly wasn’t aware of this unpublished work.
L’Engle worked for six years on a particular novel which was never published despite going through seven revisions. In the course of those revisions, the 800 page tome was pared down to a more reasonable 350-page novel. Still, the revisions did not improve the book, making it worthy of publication.
Here are my five lessons from Madeleine L’Engle that I learned from her granddaughter’s, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, presentation.
Lesson 1 – Even great writers struggle to “kill their darlings.”
Every one of those seven revisions began with the same dreadful opening – the heroine in bed with a dead lover who had suffered a fatal heart attack. She then calls a former lover, a doctor, to help her with the situation. (Perhaps this is where Downton Abbey writers came up with the scenario of the dead man in Mary’s bed.)
You want your readers to like your heroine, despite how flawed and troubled. Such an introduction doesn’t do that. There is no context or leading up to this, no reason to care about the heroine stuck in such an awful situation. Yet L’Engle continued to cling to her opening.
Lesson 2 – Too much failure can make a person bitter.
We often hear how we can learn from our failures. So true. However, it is also true that there is a point at which piling failure upon failure disheartens a person and can leave them bitter and cruel, as was the case for L’Engle’s father.
Madeleine feared becoming like her father. “It’s time for a period of sunshine,” she said. It was time for some good news lest even the most persistent and hopeful writer become discouraged and give up. We all need that sunshine. I know I do.
Lesson 3 – Memories can be Slippery
On her fortieth birthday, Madeleine received yet another rejection letter. She considered it a sign that it was time for her to quit writing, confirming her guilt over time spent writing instead of doing other appropriate tasks of a wife and mother. She wrote about this in her book A Circle of Quiet.
“So the rejection on my fortieth birthday seemed like a unmistakable command: stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie.
I covered the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally and unutterable miserable.
Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure.
I uncovered the typewriter. In my journal I recorded this moment of decision for what it was. I had to write.”
However, this account is contradicted in other journals that mentioned the time of the rejection letter being earlier than her birthday.
Memory can be a capricious thing. I’ve often gotten days and other details about events in my life wrong. Looking at past journal entries or trying to line up dates with the memories sometimes confirm this mistake. Why wouldn’t Madeleine L’Engle have the same experience? Sometimes we remember something one way for so long that it becomes entrenched in our minds this way.
Or … perhaps Madeleine embellished for dramatic effect. Good storytellers do that.
Lesson 4 – Nothing is wasted.
Even as L’Engle was swearing off writing, another book was forming in her subconscious, one about failure. After giving up on this novel, L’Engle went on a trip with her family. The idea for A Wrinkle in Time developed while on that trip, using the theme/message of her unpublished book.
Lesson 5 – Writers Write
All writing is a practice of craft. Out of the dregs of one book or article, comes another one. The only failure is to stop practicing the craft. As Jean Rhys said, “All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.” The only failure is to stop feeding the lake.
Even as L’Engle contemplated giving up writing, she realized she couldn’t. There was something within her that needed expression through writing. There is something within all writers that begs to come out. The only failure is to ignore that need. Writers write.
Final Lessons from Madeleine L’Engle
Do you agonize over the question, “am I a writer?” My response to you is, “Do you write?” If you write, you are a writer. If you feel there is something essential missing if you don’t write, you are a writer. Pick up your pen or open your laptop.
I am but a trickle in the lake of writing. Let me be the best trickle I can be. L’Engle has given me reason to pick up pen again and again.
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